Co-presented with Latin American Film Festival of Dallas (LAFFD)

Alberto Gout, 1950, Mexico, 101 min
Widely considered the greatest film in Mexico’s singular rumbera genre, Aventurera is a pitch-black film noir punctuated by Afro-Caribbean musical numbers. Cuban-born dancer-singer Ninón Sevilla stars as a proper young lady who, within ten minutes, witnesses a parent’s suicide, is sold into prostitution, and transformed into a nightclub sensation. Through these hairpin turns; the rules of female portrayal are rewritten. Elegantly rendered in inky black-and-white by legendary Golden Age of Mexican Cinema cinematographer Alex Phillips, Aventurera is a razor-sharp indictment of bourgeois society.